


Xenophiles' Dinner Club

by applesofthemoon



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Double Dating, Extremely Uncomfortable Double Dating, F/F, Human Nothlit Aftran, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-03-01 02:53:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18791527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/applesofthemoon/pseuds/applesofthemoon
Summary: Two humans, a Yeerk, and an Andalite go out on a dinner date. What could go wrong?





	Xenophiles' Dinner Club

**Author's Note:**

  * For [c_rowles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/c_rowles/gifts).



> This fic was a gift for [c_rowles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/c_rowles/pseuds/c_rowles), but I'd have written it for myself if I didn't write it for her, because I've wanted Caftran and AxMarco to exist in the same universe pretty much since I found out about Caftran and AxMarco. It takes place in Catie's wonderful [human nothlit Aftran AU](https://c-rowlesdraws.tumblr.com/tagged/human-nothlit-au-adventures) mashed up with [Cavatica's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cavatica/pseuds/Cavatica) [Breaking & Entering series](https://archiveofourown.org/series/547507) (Cassie's mom knowing that Ax likes her husband’s chili isn't me misremembering the events of book #8, it's a reference to [Sex Education](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9649508)!) Never let it be said that I did anything original, ever.

**Cassie**

Aftran wrinkled her nose at the shopping bags piled onto my bed. “What _is_ all of this?”

“They’re clothes,” Rachel said patiently. “Clothes that won’t make you look like a refugee from a Bush concert.”

“What’s a Bush concert?”

I peeled back the tissue paper hiding the contents of the bag nearest me. Inside were several pairs of pants in dark colors, all of them with price tags still attached. “Rachel,” I said, “are these all _new?”_

“Yeah, I went to the mall and bought a bunch of stuff with my mom’s credit card. Don’t worry, I’ll return whatever you don’t like.” Ignoring my dismay, she picked up three of the bags and handed them to Aftran. “These are for you. Hurry up, the boys will be here in fifteen minutes.”

Aftran went into my bathroom to change, which was probably for the best; we weren’t really at the seeing-each-other-naked stage in our relationship yet. Seeing each other’s thoughts, sure, but not seeing each other naked. Out of politeness, I had looked away when she morphed human for the first and last time. Not that she would have cared if I hadn’t.

Rachel took a long lavender dress out of one of the remaining shopping bags and held it up against my body, studying the effect. I bit my lip. “Do you really think this is a good idea?”

Of course she thought it was a good idea. It had been her idea to begin with. No one was exactly thrilled by the news that Aftran and I were...more than friends, but Marco and Ax had taken it by far the worst. Rachel was my best friend, in my corner no matter what I did, and Tobias backed her up as usual. Jake trusted me, even when he didn’t agree with me. Marco thought I was an idiot, and Ax thought I was nuts. You would think they’d both feel a little friendlier toward Aftran seeing as she helped me save Ax’s life, but I guess it’s true what they say: no good deed goes unpunished.

Rachel being Rachel, she decided that the best way to defuse the tension was for all four of us to get dressed up and go out to dinner. A double date, she was calling it. The most awkward double date in human (or Andalite, or Yeerk) history. “Come on, it’ll be fun,” she said. “If nothing else, you’ll get some free food out of it. I told you my mom’s got a connection at Silvano’s.”

“This green dress makes me look like a lizard,” Aftran announced from the bathroom.

“I was afraid of that,” Rachel said. “Try the navy suit.”

She had me put on the lavender dress––“too Homecoming,” she said––then another one, black with beaded fringe––“too roaring ‘20s.” The third one she liked. It was pale pink–– _"blush,_ Cassie, it’s called blush”––with a swishy skirt that stopped just above my knees. Up top, fine netting covered the skin between my collarbone and the dress’s heart-shaped neckline. Before I could look to see how much it had cost, Rachel snipped off the price tag with a pair of nail scissors.

“Why don’t you come with us to dinner?” I said as she cupped my chin to do my lip gloss. “You could bring Tobias. Make it a triple date.”

“Quit moving your mouth.” The little ball at the opening of the lip gloss tube rolled across my lips, leaving them weirdly slick. “You don’t need me to protect you from Ax and Marco. They’re just...well...it’s a public place. There’ll be witnesses.”

I frowned. “That makes me feel much better.”

“Relax.” Rachel screwed the cap back onto her lip gloss and smiled. “You look amazing, and you’re going to have a good time. You’re _all_ going to have a good time. Everyone will understand each other a little bit better, and you’ll be able to show up to a barn meeting without getting eye-shishkebabed by Prince Pissbaby and his noble steed. Won’t that be nice?”

“I’m ready,” Aftran called out.

“Good,” Rachel said. “So are we.”

Aftran came out of the bathroom in a navy blue suit over a crisp white button-up shirt. The suit fit like she’d been sewn into it, making her long, lean body look even longer and leaner. She had brushed her hair and it shone sleekly in the soft light of my bedside lamp. My stomach shivered, suddenly filled with butterflies.

She stared at me, taking in the dress, and I felt my cheeks getting hot. “Cassie,” she said, “you look like a princess.”

“Hey, this is a good shirt,” said Marco, popping up in the doorway like a mole in a Whac-A-Mole machine. “Don’t make me puke on it.”

He was wearing dress pants and a button-up, his suit jacket slung over his shoulder as if he were too cool to actually wear it. “Where’s Ax?” I asked.

“Downstairs, talking to your mom about her potted herbs.” He jerked his chin in the direction of the stairs. “Let’s get this freak show on the road.”

By the time we went downstairs, Ax had finished talking to my mom and was waiting by the front door. He looked good in his suit, but that was news to no one. Ax looked good in everything he wore, because he was beautiful. “That is an attractive garment, Cassie.” He looked from me to Aftran and his expression iced over. “Aftran.”

She sniffed. “Don’t be mad because I rock a suit better than your boyfriend.”

“Play nice, kids.” Rachel came down the stairs with her arms full of shopping bags. She brushed past us and out the front door, leaving us with a final warning: “I mean it.”

My mom chose that moment to appear in the entryway. She did a double-take at my dress, then flashed us all a smile. “You kids look fancy,” she said. “Is there a party tonight?”

“We’re going out to dinner,” I said, omitting the ‘date’ part. Telling Mom I was dating Aftran would be problematic on a couple of levels: one, it would invite a whole bunch of questions I couldn’t begin to answer, and two, I wasn’t even sure if Aftran and I were dating. It was less than that, what we were doing, and also somehow more.

“Oh. Do you need a ride?”

I hesitated. Being crammed into a car with Mom, two aliens, and an unhappy Marco wasn’t my idea of fun, but how else were we going to get to the restaurant? Aftran couldn’t fly, and our nice clothes wouldn’t have survived a morph anyway. “A ride would be great.” 

I sat up front, next to Mom, and sighed as Marco and Ax played rock-paper-scissors for the seat furthest from Aftran. Ax lost and took the middle. Mom, seeming not to sense any tension, struck up a conversation on the way down the driveway. “Why don’t you introduce me to your friends, Cassie?”

“Um.” She already knew Marco, so she must have meant Ax and Aftran. “Well, Mom, meet Ax and...Ursula. Ax and Ursula, my mom.”

“It is a pleasure. Sure,” said Ax. “Although we had already met in the central living area of your home.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you, Ax,” Mom said warmly. “Walter won’t stop talking about how much you enjoyed his chili. He’d have you over for dinner every night if he could.” She adjusted her rearview mirror so she could look back at Aftran. “What’s your story, Ursula? Do you go to school with Cassie?”

“Yep,” I said. “She’s a school friend. We met at school.”

“Which class?”

“History,” I said.

“Art,” said Aftran at the same time.

“Oh, bravo,” Marco muttered.

I scrambled to reconcile Aftran’s lie with mine. “What I meant is, uh, we have two classes together. We met in History, but we became friends in Art.” 

Mom turned her attention to the road for a minute, and we all got a chance to breathe. <I can speak for myself, you know,> Aftran told me in private thought-speak. Her voice in my head was different from her voice when she spoke out loud. I guess that was because it was _her voice,_ not a blend of the voices of the people she had acquired to create her human body.

She was right. _I’m sorry,_ I thought back at her, but of course, she couldn’t hear me. 

**Marco**

I could not _believe_ I had let Rachel rope me into this. As if it didn’t suck enough that I had to spend most of my free time fighting aliens, now I was supposed to give up a Friday night to make nice with Cassie and her Yeerk girlfriend? There was only one reasonable response to that idea, and it started with _f_ and ended with _uck no._

So how did I end up in the back seat of Cassie’s mom’s car on the way to the interspecies double date from hell? Either Rachel was really persuasive, or I was really stupid.

Cassie’s mom let us out in front of the restaurant, and I slid on my suit jacket as we went inside. It was a classy place, low-lit, with white linen tablecloths and upholstered chairs. The hostess sat us at a four-top in the center of the dining room. At each place was a crystal glass and an elaborately-folded napkin. It was meant to be a flower, maybe, or a sailboat, or that weird white building you always see in pictures of Australia.

“This is a form of Earth art I have not yet seen,” Ax said, examining his napkin. “It is exquisite. Kwizit.”

“So,” I said to Cassie and Aftran, “you guys want to head out? I won’t tell Rachel if you won’t.” It was meant to be a joke––now that we were inside the restaurant, I had no real expectation of getting Ax to leave before he was fed––but no one was laughing. “Okay, an hour of strained silence it is.” 

Our waiter came by, looking less than enthused to be serving a table of teenagers, and filled our glasses with water. I flipped open the menu. The restaurant was an Italian restaurant, so the menu headings were in Italian, as were the menu items. The descriptions were in English, but they were peppered with gibberish like ‘pappardelle’ and ‘branzino’ and ‘rucola,’ the last of which I was pretty sure was a brand of cough drop. 

“What is bruschetta?” Ax asked me.

“It’s an appetizer,” I told him. “Crispy bread with tomatoes on top.”

Across the table, Aftran was staring down her menu as if it had insulted her mother, or her pool, or whatever. “Do you think they have a kids’ menu?” she said to Cassie. 

I couldn’t help myself. “You mean a menu for kids, or a menu with kids on it?”

Aftran sneered at me. “If I wanted to eat a small child, why would I need a menu? You’re sitting right here.”

“Sounds hot, but you probably shouldn’t come onto me in front of your girlfriend.”

“What is fettuccine?” Ax asked me.

“It’s a kind of pasta,” I said.

“Marco,” Cassie said, “can you _please_ try not to be gross?”

She had a lot of nerve, calling _me_ gross. _I_ wasn’t the one making goo-goo eyes at the Yeerk who almost got her killed. “What, I can’t talk to Ax without offending your delicate sensibilities? This is blatant homophobia. I’m calling the ACLU.”

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

Ax nudged me again. “What is—”

“Ax,” I said, “two days ago I watched you eat Vicks VapoRub on toast. I promise you will like _anything_ you order off this menu.”

He decided on the chicken parm, and me on the crab-stuffed tortellini. Cassie ordered something called gnocchi pomodoro, which was the snooty Italian way of saying dumplings in tomato sauce. Aftran got spaghetti. When the waiter left, I stood up and said, “I’m going to the bathroom. Come get me when it’s time to go home.”

I seriously thought about going cockroach and slipping out, but my suit was like, the _only_ good suit I owned, and I didn’t think Ax would be much inclined to grab it for me if I bailed on him. So I locked myself in the single-stall bathroom and sat on the toilet with my pants up, trying to calculate how much time I could spend in there before my dining companions assumed I had died on the throne like Elvis.

Why couldn’t Cassie have stopped at saving Aftran? I was fine with that. I mean, I didn’t love it, but when it was done, it was done. We packed her off to her new life and got on with ours. That was about six months ago. I didn’t know when Cassie and Aftran had become a _thing,_ or how long Jake had known about it before the rest of us did. All I knew was that one day last week we were hanging out in Cassie’s barn, talking through some intel from the Chee, and I made a joke about Cassie fooling around with Jake, and all of a sudden she looked like she might burst into tears.

It got so quiet I swear I heard one of Tobias’s feathers fall to the ground. _You should tell them,_ Jake said.

She cried when she told us, and the more she cried the angrier I got. She was sleeping with the enemy and we were supposed to what, feel _sorry_ for her? I said as much out loud, at which point Rachel barked at me to back off, at which point Ax got mad and the meeting devolved into a shouting match, absent any literal shouting on Ax’s part. It wasn’t a day I liked remembering.

Someone knocked on the bathroom door, and I flushed the toilet to make it seem like I had been doing something in there besides stewing over my friend’s romantic entanglement with a body-snatching alien. Back at the table, it seemed the ‘strained silence’ portion of the evening was well underway. <If you leave me alone with them again,> Ax said as I sat down, <I will tape over every single one of your old _X-Files_ episodes.>

“So,” said Cassie, affecting a smile. “Ax. How’s the scoop?”

Ax blinked at her. “It is a hole in the ground,” he said. “How is your multi-storied human dwelling?”

“Oh, it’s...multi-storied.” Cassie smoothed the napkin in her lap. “The other day my mom brought home a new rug for my bedroom. It’s got this, um, this big flower on it.”

“You don’t say,” I drawled.

That shut her down for a second, but then she started in again, this time on me. “How’s your dad, Marco?” 

“Oh my god, spare me the inquisition.” I picked up a fork and pointed it at Cassie. “If you think I’m going to sit here all night making small talk with you like you didn’t break my best friend’s heart because of _this––”_

“Oh please, she hardly broke his heart,” Aftran cut in. “They only kissed the once.”

I raised my eyebrows at Cassie. “You told her that?”

Cassie winced. “Well, I didn’t _tell_ her.”

I made an exaggerated retching noise. “Okay, now I really am going to be sick.”

“If we are going to have this conversation, we should not do so in public,” Ax said. “I am afraid we may ‘cause a scene.’”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I agree with the Andalite. You’re acting like a six-year-old,” Aftran told me.

“Well, you would know,” I said.

“Don’t you get tired of being so hostile all the time?” Aftran looked at me with a chilly intensity in her eyes. “Why can’t you at least give me a chance? What did I ever do to you?”

I choked out a laugh. “What did you _do?_ Are you _seriously_ asking that question?”

“Not _what did I do,_ what did I do _to you?_ You humans love to talk about the greater good and the grand scheme of things, but I want to know what _I_ did to _you,_ personally.”

Cassie’s eyes were huge with alarm. “We _really_ shouldn’t be having this conversation in public.”

“What did you do to me,” I said flatly. I wanted to morph gorilla and break Aftran’s neck with my bare hands. I wanted to do what I should have done the very first time I saw her. Instead, I shoved back my chair and stood up. “That’s it. I’m out.”

**Aftran**

Marco had just left the restaurant when the waiter turned up with our meals. “I suppose I should go get him,” said the Andalite, looking wistfully at the steaming plate of food in front of him.

I rolled my eyes. “I’ll do it.”

“I’ll come with you,” Cassie said.

“Stay,” I told her. “Eat your food.” I pushed back my chair. “I’ll be fine.” 

The truth was, I might not be fine. I was an unarmed human _nothlit_ about to confront a morph-capable guerrilla soldier who hated me. He could kill me if he wanted to, with few to no consequences. Rachel was nice to me, and Jake and Tobias had been civil, but I knew that none of them would be sad to see me go. Only Cassie, and what could she do about it? Quit the team again? Stop trying to save her planet from the Yeerks because Marco had killed one? The Animorphs killed Yeerks all the time. I would just be a drop in the bucket. 

But Marco’s problem was with me, not Cassie or his pet Andalite, so this mess was mine to clean up. I went outside and found him sitting on the sidewalk a few yards from the restaurant’s entrance, huddled against the brick building. When he saw me, he said a swear word. “Great. Just who I was hoping to see.” He squinted in the glare of the streetlight behind me. “I swear you acquired the tallest Asians in Santa Barbara just to piss me off.”

I sat down. “Is that better?” Even sitting, I was taller than him.

“No.” 

For a few minutes, neither of us said anything. I folded my arms and rested my elbows on my knees. On the road in front of the restaurant, cars passed in a trickle. I should learn to drive, probably. This body was old enough. The Chee had helped me with fake papers for my job; maybe they could set me up with a car.

Marco cast me a sidelong glance. “Do you really want to know?”

“Know what?” I said.

“What you did to me.”

“No, I just asked because I’m bad at small talk.”

He snorted. “That day in the national forest,” he said. “The day we met. I was the first one to find you and Cassie, remember?”

“I remember.”

“I saw her let you into her head. I watched it happen. I couldn’t...I didn’t stop her.” As he spoke, he stared straight ahead, at the row of closed shops across the road from the restaurant. “I thought we had lost her. Then, and again when she was the caterpillar. All because I didn’t act when I should have.” A sharp edge flashed in his voice. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

“I do, though.” I remembered the smell of trees, the shooting pain in Karen’s ankle, the taste of her tears. My tears. “I thought I had doomed her that day too.”

“Whatever. You barely knew her.”

 _I already knew her better than you ever will,_ I almost said, but didn’t. Odds were it wouldn’t improve our relationship any. “Listen,” I said, “you can hate me if you want. I don’t care. I deserve it. But you have to stop taking it out on Cassie.” I knew everything Cassie knew about Marco, and Cassie knew he was a pragmatist at heart. (His Andalite probably knew that too, but I hadn’t been in his head long enough to get more on Marco than how much he’d wanted to touch his hair.) “You two are teammates. There’s still a war to fight. Are you really going to let the resistance fall apart because of this? Because of me?”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he said, scoffing.

“Stop it. I’m a viable host now. Even if I were completely morally bankrupt, I’d have as much reason as anyone to want Earth to stay free.” I stuck out my hand. “Do we have a deal?”

Marco glared at my hand like he thought it might be booby–trapped. _“Fine,”_ he said. “I’ll call a truce with Cassie. But I’m not shaking your hand.” He stood up and stretched. “And I’m not telling her my Top Ten Tips for Romancing an Alien. She’ll have to figure that out on her own.”

“Lucky for me she’s a smart girl.”

We were on our way inside when Marco said another swear word and ducked to one side of the glass doors, pulling me with him. “What?” I hissed. “What did you see in there?”

“I’m not sure,” he said, “but it’s bad.”

**Ax**

The food at Santino’s Italian restaurant was superb, but I was so distracted by the problem of Cassie and the human _nothlit_ who had once been a Yeerk that I finished my meal and half of Marco’s and found that I could not continue. Cassie wasn’t very hungry either. She ate a few bites of the dish in front of her and rearranged the rest of it with her fork.

I was not as emotional about the situation as Marco was, but I worried that Cassie had put herself in an untenable position. It was looking increasingly likely that the Yeerk invasion of Earth would not end except in all-out war, and winning would mean taking decisive action against the enemy. Yeerks would die, perhaps in great numbers. What would the human _nothlit_ do then? Was she human enough to stay by Cassie’s side if doing so meant forsaking her people? 

Cassie looked at me sadly. “Ax,” she said, “you know I didn’t do this _to_ any of you, don’t you? It just…happened.”

“I know that, Cassie,” I said. “I just hope _you_ know what you are getting yourself into.”

“Well, maybe I don’t.” She smiled a little. “Do you?”

Before I could formulate a response to that––or even begin to parse its meaning––our waiter came to deliver the bill. “Whenever you’re ready,” he said.

“Oh,” Cassie said, “it’s supposed to be on the house.” She made an apologetic face at the waiter. “Our friend’s mom knows the head chef. Robert Bianchi?”

The waiter regarded her stonily. “There is no one here by that name.”

“What?” Cassie paled. “This is Silvano’s, isn’t it?”

“No, miss. This is Santino’s.”

It turns out that when one cannot pay for one’s meal at a restaurant on Earth, one must barter for the food with a form of unskilled labor known as dishwashing. This entails going into the restaurant’s kitchen and washing large quantities of soiled dishware with soap and water before sending the dishes through a special machine to sanitize them further. All of which would have been a fascinating cultural experience had I not been ten Earth minutes and thirty-two Earth seconds away from running out of morph time. 

<What’s going on in there?> demanded a thought-speak voice. It was familiar, somehow, but for a moment I could not place it.

<Excuse me?> I replied.

<Pay attention, Andalite. What’s going on in there?>

Of course. It was Cassie’s human _nothlit,_ and this was not the first time I had heard her voice in my head. <My name is Aximili,> I told her. <My human friends call me Ax. You may use either, but I do not answer to ‘Andalite.’>

There was a few seconds’ silence, then: <Okay, Ax. This is Aftran. What happened?>

<It seems a mistake was made. This restaurant expects us to pay for our meals and we lack the money to do so. Cassie and I have been made to wash dishes in exchange for the food.>

<That’s a relief. We thought you’d blown cover and been dragged off by Controllers. I guess someone had better go get some money.>

<I am afraid there is no time,> I said. <I have only eight minutes and twelve seconds remaining in morph, and the kitchen manager will not permit either of us to leave for anything.> I paused. <This human body has certain advantages, but it is still inferior to my natural form. I do not wish to remain human permanently.>

<Yeah, it’s not for everyone,> Aftran said. <Sit tight. Curious George and I are going to come up with a plan.>

I didn’t know how to ‘sit tight,’ but I continued to wash dishes for a minute and twenty-six seconds until Aftran spoke to me again. <We’ve got an idea. It’s going to require some acting.>

<Acting?>

<Yeah. In a couple of seconds you’re going to see a cockroach crawl in under the back door. You have to pick it up and freak out. Show it to whoever’s in charge. Humans _hate_ when there are bugs near their food, and the restaurant could get in big trouble if anyone finds out they’ve got roaches in the kitchen. Use that as a bargaining chip. I’ll tell Cassie to play along.>

<Don’t drop me, okay?> said Marco’s thought-speak voice. <I’d like to end the evening three dimensional, if possible.>

I withdrew my hands from the soapy water in the sink in front of me and dried them on the apron given to me by the kitchen manager. As promised, Marco wriggled in under the back door, and I bent down to let him climb into my cupped hands. Now for the acting. “Oh!” I exclaimed. “What a disgusting creature!”

“Eek, what _is_ that!?” Cassie cried.

“What’s going on back here?” said the kitchen manager, storming up to the dishwashing station. “You two, back to work.”

I held Marco up by one of his back legs. “There is an objectionable insect in your kitchen.” 

“What? That’s impossible!”

“It is possible. Ssible.” Marco waved his antennae as if in agreement. “As a human with the characteristic human aversion to insects, I am horrified to discover one in a food preparation area.”

Marco groaned in my head. <You know, Ax, if you wanted to stay human, you could’ve just said so.>

I took that to mean he was not impressed by my acting abilities, but they seemed to be serving their purpose. “Now, let’s not blow this out of proportion,” said the kitchen manager, smiling a strained smile. “Why don’t you kids head home and let us take care of the bug problem? Dinner’s on me.”

“Well,” I said, already undoing my apron, “if you insist.”

I burst through the back door into the alley behind the restaurant, Cassie right behind me, and immediately began to demorph. Bones crunched and organs shifted as my true shape reasserted itself. My hindquarters emerged and tore through the pants Marco had lent me, leaving them in shreds on the ground. The shirt and suit jacket remained intact, which, once I was fully demorphed, put me in the patently ridiculous position of an Andalite half-dressed in human formal wear.

 _“Ax!”_ Marco wailed as soon as his lips replaced the cockroach’s mandibles. “You ruined my dad’s dress pants!”

I rolled my main eyes. <I apologize for prioritizing my own bodily integrity over your father’s clothing,> I said. <How _could_ I be so selfish?>

Aftran leaned against the back wall of the building, her hands in her jacket pockets. “This Animorphs stuff is kinda fun,” she said. “Good hustle, team.”

“I feel bad about tricking the kitchen manager, though,” Cassie said. “I hope he doesn’t really have to pay our bill.”

I shrugged off my jacket and started unbuttoning the shirt beneath it. “Oh yeah, take it off,” Marco said, then looked to Cassie and Aftran. “Hey, how are you guys getting home?”

“I saw a pay phone a block away on the drive here,” Cassie said. “I’ll call my mom and ask her to pick us up. Do you need a ride?”

“Nah, I’m going to fly Ax home. But do me a solid and hold onto these, will you?” He took my shirt and jacket and his own shed dress clothes and gave them to Cassie. “I’ll come get them tomorrow.”

We morphed owls and set out on silent wings, riding the night wind back to Cassie’s farm. There, we demorphed to walk the last mile to my scoop. The forest hummed with the noises of nocturnal life, small creatures digging and climbing and feeding in the dark. Earth’s single moon peered down through the treetops, its light just bright enough to see by. <So,> I said, swiveling a stalk eye to look at Marco, <what did you and Aftran talk about when you left the table?>

“Oh, you know,” he said. I didn’t know, but I assumed that meant he didn’t want to tell me. He ran his hand up my back, making me shudder as my fur was pushed in the wrong direction, and jogged ahead so he could walk backwards facing me. “How about you and Cassie?”

<I asked her if she knew what she was doing.>

He laughed. “Of course she doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s just a sucker for a pair of pretty palps.” He lifted his two index fingers to either side of his mouth and wiggled them like a Yeerk’s sensory appendages. 

I did not mention what Cassie had asked me in return. Part of me took offense to the very question; Marco wasn’t an Andalite, but neither was he a Yeerk. Another part of me feared it was the first thing, not the second, that mattered. That was the part of me that already missed this time in our lives, even though it was still happening. The part of me that had been preparing to lose him since before he was mine to lose.

<You are going to hurt yourself walking like that.>

He shrugged. “What’s life without a little risk?”

When we reached the scoop, I asked, <Do you want to come in?>

“Can’t. I’ve got to get home before my dad and Nora do, or they’ll wonder why I went out dressed for dinner and came back dressed for the Tour de France.”

I touched his cheek, turning his face up to mine. He smiled and covered my hand with his. <Aftran does not look better in a suit than you do,> I said.

“I know,” he said, already beginning the morph back to owl. 

Once Marco was gone, I stood outside for a while and looked up at the stars, thinking about home. Aftran could never go home. Even if she someday set foot on the Yeerk homeworld, she would never again be with her own kind in their natural state. I did not envy her that. But I did wonder if it made things easier.

**Epilogue: Aftran**

When Cassie’s mom dropped me off at my apartment, I went upstairs and threw off my jacket, pants, and shirt. In my underwear and tank top I grabbed a fork and a can of SpaghettiOs and flopped onto my futon in front of the TV. ABC was running TGIF and _Sabrina the Teenage Witch_ was on. I liked _Sabrina,_ even though it was pretty far-fetched. I mean, magic? Come on.

I didn’t know what it was like to be alone until I became a _nothlit._ A Yeerk is never alone. In a pool, you’re always surrounded by other Yeerks, rarely beyond a palp’s reach from a sibling or cousin. In a host there’s always...well, the host. Now I was often alone, when I wasn’t at work, or with Cassie or the members of the peace movement. Having the TV on helped. The constant chatter was a cushion against the silence of humanity.

A half hour after I got home, I heard a tap at my window. I got up, lifted the sash, and found an owl on the brick sill, a big brown owl with eyes like two golden moons. “Hey,” I said. 

Cassie flapped inside and demorphed, saving the eyes for last. Before she was fully human, she was a human with a pair of fierce owl eyes. I always got goosebumps watching her morph. It had been terrifying for me, feeling my flesh distend with a whole human body’s worth of blood and bone and tissue, but Cassie had total control. She could probably make even a Yeerk-to-human morph beautiful.

Once her eyes were her eyes again, they flicked to the empty can of SpaghettiOs on the floor beside my futon. “You know you’re supposed to eat those warm, right?” she said.

I sat back down on the futon. “I thought you liked me because I’m a rebel.”

She sat down facing me, and I reached for the remote to lower the volume on the TV. “We didn’t really get to talk in the car,” she said. “I wanted to say I’m sorry about tonight. I shouldn’t have let Rachel talk me into it.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” I told her.

“It wasn’t?” she said, skeptical. “Marco was horrible to you.”

“Yeah, but I get the sense that’s like, a rite of passage for you guys. I’d be more worried if he _wasn’t_ horrible to me.” I stretched out my legs, touching her thigh with my toes. “Want to watch TV with me? It’s TGIF.”

She smiled. “Okay, but just for a little bit. My mom will freak if I fall asleep here.”

So we watched TV for a little while, not talking, barely touching, just being together. Once I stole a look at her, at her screen-lit face changing colors with the scenes on TV. At dinner, Marco had called her my girlfriend. I didn’t have much experience with human pair-bonding, but I liked being with Cassie. If us being girlfriends meant I could be with her as much as possible, I was okay with that.

It was late by the time she left, and I decided to go to bed. Usually I left the TV on while I slept, but this time I turned it off. I was learning to live with the silence.


End file.
